Metabolic Flexibility
Metabolic flexibility is the body’s ability to adapt and use whatever fuel is available to it (sugar or fat). If you’ve eaten recently, that fuel is the sugar in your blood (glucose). If you have not eaten recently or if all your blood glucose has been used up, that fuel is stored fat. Although sugar is ideal for quick energy, fat is a more efficient fuel source for your metabolism.
Metabolic flexibility is important to good health. A lack of metabolic flexibility leads to fatigue, cravings, irritability and other chronic diseases.
Metabolism
Metabolism is a term that is used to describe all chemical reactions involved in maintaining the living state of the cells and organism. Metabolism is closely linked to nutrition, and energy production is one of its vital components.
Metabolism and Your Liver
Roman scholars viewed the liver as the most important organ in the body and the Mesopotamian culture believed it to be the seat of our soul and emotions. The liver sits at the centre of the metabolic system, which involves the production of energy and its delivery to each cell in the body. The liver is fundamental to our well-being and improving liver function is the one of the most powerful ways to improve overall health.
Metabolism and Metabolic Flexibility
Every cell requires energy. The food we eat is digested and broken down into its components, which will either be used immediately or stored. Inside our bodies, carbohydrates are found as glucose or glycogen, and fats as fatty acids or ketones. The liver converts deconstructed food into glycogen or fatty acids, and distributes them to tissues to be used for energy. When there is excess energy, the liver will store the excess either as glycogen or as fat. Most organs and muscles also have a limited supply of stored glycogen.
Our bodies can thus use energy as glycogen or fat. Each has different energetic properties and appropriate for different situations. Glycogen is burned quickly for bursts of energy, while fats is more of a sustainable endurance fuel with lower peak power. When a tissue requires energy, it will select a particular balance of glycogen and fat appropriate for that need. The ability of our metabolic system to appropriately select fuels is at the core of metabolic health and flexibility.
Insulin Sensitive and Fat Adapted
Insulin is a hormone that is responsible for allowing glucose in the blood to enter cells, providing them with the energy to function. Insulin sensitivity refers to how sensitive the body's cells are in response to insulin. High insulin sensitivity allows the cells of the body to use blood glucose more effectively, reducing blood sugar. You’re insulin sensitive if your cells respond effectively to insulin.
Fat-adapted refers to the ability of the body to burn both fat (through lipolysis) and glucose (through glycolysis). You’re fat adapted if you engage appropriately in fat-burning lipolysis. To become fat adapted, avoid refined carbohydrates, sugars and unhealthy fats, and increase healthy fats.
Being metabolically flexible, means you’re insulin sensitive and fat adapted. Metabolic flexibility is thus the ability of the body to utilize the correct available fuels appropriately.
Metabolic Flexibility and Disease
Poor metabolic flexibility is implicated is many modern diseases including insulin resistance, obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome and neurodegenerative diseases.
Insulin resistance occurs when cells don’t respond effectively to insulin, and cannot use the glucose in the blood. To compensate, your pancreas produces more insulin, which further desensitizes cells. Over time, blood sugar goes up and the insulin producing cells in the pancreas are damaged, leading to type 2 diabetes as well as obesity, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer.
How to Achieve Metabolic Flexibility
- Exercise
- Intermittent Fasting
- Fasting
- Get Fat Adapted
- Eliminate snacking
- Add supplements that promote metabolic flexibility, including magnesium, polyphenols, omega 3, etc.